Making the most of LaTeX

In May 2000, I had the opportunity to hold a staff development course at Brunel
Univeristy on advanced features of the LaTeX mathematical typesetting system. This page is
dedicated to making the content of this course available to those interested.

Material presented in the course

Availability of LaTeX at Brunel University. This chapter of the course
was dedicated to giving information on the various LaTeX installations under Unix
or Windows NT at Brunel University. The question of usefull editors for LaTeX under
those operating systems was also discussed.

Help on LaTeX. It was discussed were to turn for help in the first
instance, i.e. where online documentation is available for any LaTeX installations
and which sites on the Web can be accessed.

Using BibTeX. The bibliography database system BibTeX was discussed in depth.

Presentations using seminar.sty. Of the many possibilities to create
presentations using LaTeX, the seminar-style is certainly one of the most useful. Its
use was discussed.

Customizing LaTeX: Commands, lengths and counters. These fairly common tools
of LaTeX were introduced and the manipulation of them presented.

LaTeX and Graphics. The inclusion of graphics in a LaTeX document is one
of the most oftenly recurring problems when using the typesetting system. The course
discussed the use of the graphicx package, the standard way of including post-script
graphics. The related subject of using colour was also touched. This part of the course
ended with discussing various ways to convert graphics-files in other formats to encapsulated
postscript.

Diagrams in LaTeX Documents. The course presented ways to combine external diagrams
(such as created by Xfig, Matlab or Mathematica) with a LaTeX document while still preserving
a uniform look of the document (e.g. using corresponding fonts and font-sizes).

Using Fonts and Layout Options. There is an enormous wealth of material
available that can be used to give a LaTeX document an individual touch. The course
discusses some of these, especially the use of non-standard fonts.

Tips and Tricks. This section discusses various other little helpers.

LaTeX and the Web. The Web is becoming (or has become) the medium of
communication between scientists. However, it is currently little suited to publish
mathematical texts. Therefore, the publication or dissemination of LaTeX texts
through the Web is of major importance. The course discussed various ways to achieve tis.